From finance and investment to diagnosing diseases in medicine, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the global economy. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), governments have started to adopt AI as a means to realize their national agendas including the United Arab Emirates in 2017, Qatar in 2019, and Saudi Arabia in 2020.

In this context, we explore Qatar’s several AI-focused programs and examine how the Qatari government can build on this momentum to develop world-class AI applications and scale by developing an AI Center of Excellence (CoE). Insights derived from around the world feed into our understanding of how the CoE could be tailored to Qatar’s specific situation and play a central role in realizing its ambitions.

An AI CoE will help GCC governments tap into this increasingly critical technology, ensuring that AI is applied for the benefit and support of the national agenda. Critically, AI has massive potential to diversify local economies, moving them away from oil and gas production. It can also play a critical role in enabling national visions across the GCC, ushering in a future of digital opportunity.

The Qatari government will need to address key questions across all five core AI strategy pillars in order to ensure that it develops a truly effective CoE: